When Irish Eyes Are Smiting

Meanwhile, in nuclear news from elsewhere on the globe, Ireland has gone to international court in The Hague to try to shut down Britain’s Sellafield nuclear power plant. The Irish, who have been fighting the plant for decades, claim that it violates the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea by polluting the Irish Sea with radioactive waste. The Sellafield plant handles mixed plutonium and uranium oxide and is located just across the sea from Dublin and Ireland’s populous east coast. The Brits say it does not discharge significant amounts of radioactive waste, but Ireland (which has no nuclear power industry of its own) begs to differ. According to Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, Sellafield is a “dinosaur of a defunct military-industrial complex” and the “single most serious threat” to Ireland’s environment.